i answered a post about sound better re-mastering i have to ask you before saying somerthing? the re-mastering is often do for commercial reasons, standard for nomad players etc…the result is always interesting but not always ‘better’ on audiophil systems and audiophil listeners. that’s all. (and for the shure discuss i like KMS9 for vocals).
We are miscommunication; you need not ask me or anyone else before posting your thoughts.
I am only pointing out there are members discussing things other than responding to you.
but i was not questionning or wait answers. I just reacted about the post which said remastering is better sounding… no answer needed, and not yours for saying my thinking has no utility here.
I take many of my time to record and mix/mastering (for pleasure)
sorry for my bad English…
Completely agree.
This is the first firmware for me that did the magic.
I listen now to complete albums instead of only one song.
Again, your thoughts are very welcome, no one is stating your “thinking has no utility here.”
Hi Elk,
Maybe this video is posted before.
But this is a nice video about mastering over the years.
Sorry wrong video.
It shoulde be. 
Some masterings are direct transfers from the master tapes but most are not. A mastering is not necessarily better than a direct transfer from the master tapes but often is.
The biggest difference one can make in the quality of music they listen to on their system in not in the system itself. It is tracking down the best mastering for any given album (CD/vinyl/download, etc.). My favorite music is pre-1980 and there are huge differences in mastering from the original CD masterings of that music compared to more recent masterings. Heck, there are sometimes huge differences in masterings between CDs mastered in the mid to to late 80’s.
For example, I have two early CD releases of Boston’s self-titled album. One is the first USA release made in Japan and the other is an early USA release (DIDP 20006 on disc label) made in the USA. The made in USA mastering is massively better than the made in Japan mastering even though the made in Japan mastering has a bit more dynamic range. There are other early made in USA masterings that are worse than the made in Japan mastering.
Finding the right mastering can be much more important than what DAC you have. Yet many people don’t put any effort into this aspect of audio. Those that use Tidal or other streaming service sometimes get the best masterings but most often that is not the case. They usually get the latest mastering which is often the most compressed and certainly not the best sounding. This is why I use Tidal to find music I like but I still end up buying CDs even though I have access on Tidal.
Mr Elk,
The many mastering answers have been great, valuable reading for me. I am wondering if you could move them to a new thread, “Mastering is complex”
Excellent points and a good description of the challenges in finding the best sounding recordings. Thanks!
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I don’t recall if I or others already noted this review (good stuff): Audiophilia Snowmass Firmware Review
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Thanks, I bad not seen this.
I am pleased he hears the same things many of us reported early on in Beta.
‘Finally, Smith gave me an interesting piece of advice knowing that I use the DAC with a preamp: Change the DAC’s volume output level to about 86 instead of 100 before it sends out to the preamp. Subtle but noticeable, that modification seems to optimize the use of the pair; reducing noise even further, if that is even possible? So, I have been keeping the DS volume at 86-90. When I play at low volume levels at night, I can hear clean details such as those cymbals I mentioned in the Allison recording.’
Curious statement @tedsmith
Karl asked me if I minded if he printed that and since I indeed recommend that he might try that experiment I said “no problem, print away” (actually something equivalent that I don’t remember.) With Redcloud the slightly lower volume became the case explicitly since some very dynamic music could run into the overflow bug in Redcloud. (That bug is fixed in Snowmass.)
But in the abstract there’s always a tradeoff between a higher noise floor and more headroom. The DS has at least 6dB extra headroom in the digital processing and (originally) 6dB extra headroom in the analog (i.e. it can drive to twice the “full scale” output level if needed.) But still since SACDs can go above 0dBFS for short periods of time they can get closer to the DS’s limits. By lowering the volume setting by about 6dB (e.g. to 88) you loose 6dB of S/N but that may not be a noticeable loss in a given system and having more room for instantaneous excursions may add a little more life to the music (if you have a preamp to correct the level.)
I often try to get people to not worry about, say, 100 vs 99. That’s because for the DS there is no objectively best volume, except for increasing the S/N as much as possible. Unlike most other DACs a volume of 100 saves no computing resources, generates no less noise or is in any special compared to 99 or 101, except that 99 is 1/2dB closer to the noise floor and will need to be made up for with a preamp on the other end. Whether that preamp sounds better at 1/2dB louder is much less well defined than what happens in the DS.
So taken together I can see why people might think I’m contradicting myself. I don’t think so, but people should just experiment for themselves rather that picking any volume on the DS or their preamp because someone else said it was a good idea.
5 Likes
Is Snowmass 3.0.4 the V2 version ?
This thread is (nominally) for the DS Sr and there aren’t multiple releases of Snowmass for the Sr.
There are multiple releases of the DS Jr code and this post (and the whole thread it’s in) go over the Jr releases:
Ted, you have that backwards…there are multiple releases of the DS senior Snowmass release: V1 and V2.
The thread you link is for the DS Senior.
Oops, thanks for the correction.
Ted,
I have the SR.
yep, SMv1 is 3.0.0